In July, a 16-year-old boy was critically injured by a hammer-wielding attacker and found lying in a pool of blood in the early-morning hours on Rodman Street. Last year, on another July day, this time in broad daylight, two 16-year-olds were shot after a masked gunmen opened fire as the boy and girl sat on a stoop on Dwelly Street.

In July, a 16-year-old boy was critically injured by a hammer-wielding attacker and found lying in a pool of blood in the early-morning hours on Rodman Street. Last year, on another July day, this time in broad daylight, two 16-year-olds were shot after a masked gunmen opened fire as the boy and girl sat on a stoop on Dwelly Street.

Police claimed both attacks were gang-related. In the hammer attack, the shirts the two suspects were wearing were red, the signature gang color for the Bloods. A bandanna the shooter was hiding his face with was blue, the identifying gang color of the Crips.

As violence among gangs and their young members thrives in Fall River, local agencies are stepping up to offer positive alternatives to gang life and violence on the street.

One is the Youth Outreach Program at CD Rec in the Armory building. The program serves 44 young men from ages 16 to 24 — who are court-involved because of violent crimes and are at risk of joining a gang or have already been inducted into one — through intensive one-on-one mentoring with Outreach workers, said Christian McCloskey, the city’s youth services coordinator.

The intervention program, officially titled Safe and Successful Youth Initiative, is in its first year. It is being funded from a $1.2 million grant through the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. The program coordinates intervention efforts with another CD Rec program, the Shannon Community Safety Initiative, which works with at-risk young men and women ages 14 to 24.

The voluntary Outreach program focuses on the young men’s needs in education, health and positive activities and jobs, McCloskey said.

“This is a program that gives the youth a chance to reinvent themselves while providing support for the whole family,” McCloskey said.

CD Rec Program Director Jamison Souza said getting a youth to participate in the program sometimes requires dozens of outreach efforts by the workers to build rapport.

“The key to the program is trust,” Souza said.

Jobs are a real draw for many of the program’s youth while others need to be convinced that earning money legally is a better way to go than selling drugs, Souza said.

Employment is the biggest barrier for the at-risk youth, and the Outreach Program provides job-readiness training and help with job placement. CD Rec partnered with the YMCA, Boys & Girls Club, Battleship Cove, Heritage State Park and the Fall River Childrens’ Museum to place their clients.

On the road

At 5 p.m. on Thursday night, Youth Outreach worker Victoria Maniatis was starting her four-hour shift, and already the texts and calls were coming from three of “her kids.”

It’s a good thing, said Maniatis, who must have a face-to-face meeting three times a week with each of her 11 clients.

Page 2 of 4 - “If I haven’t heard from them, then I’ll partner up with one of the other Outreach workers and then we go searching,” Maniatis said, climbing behind the wheel of her SUV.

Many of the young men who join Outreach are referred by the schools, juvenile probation or the courts, said Maniatis. But, remarkably, many who find their way to the program hear about the program through friends already involved. Outreach workers also go out to the streets and parks known as gathering places for various rival gangs to spread the word they’re here to help.

Getting the youth at that moment when they think they want help is crucial, she said. If Maniatis gets a call from a youth looking for information about the program, she said she’s out the door to meet him.

“If we don’t grab them right then and there and at the moment they say, ‘This is what I need,’ sometimes we lose the opportunity,” Maniatis said.

Many of the kids in Outreach are on the cusp of being pulled into a gang, often because siblings — or the whole family — are already involved.

“A lot of them will have a relative in prison for a violent, gang-related crime and they’ll tell me, ‘This is what my life will be.’ We have to show them there are alternatives,” Maniatis said.

After heading to a Lower Highlands neighborhood, Maniatis met up with 16-year-old Adam Pimental. A student at the Resiliency Preparatory School, Pimental joined the program less than a month ago and has already landed a job working 15 hours a week doing maintenance at CD Rec.

All the youth involved in the program set their own goals, and Pimental reached some of his — including staying in school and finding employment — very quickly, Maniatis said.

Pimental was vague about the criminal charges he faced and the nature of his crimes, only saying, “I’ve been in my fair share of trouble.”

“But before, I wasn’t really doing anything with my life. I wasn’t being productive,” Pimental said.

School, jobs and safe transportation

Maniatis got back in her SUV and drove to the YMCA, where she picked up 17-year-old Dara Say, who started a new job that day at the recreation facility.

Transporting her kids is a big part of the job to keep them engaged in their activities, and more importantly, safe on the streets.

“I can have a kid that’s being targeted for initiation in a gang or is a target of a rival gang. It’s also a time that I can connect with them, talk about what’s going on in their lives or if they just need someone to talk to,” Maniatis said.

Page 3 of 4 - Managing rival gang members in the program and outside the program definitely has it challenges for the youth workers. Maniatis said it’s the kids that will usually give the workers a heads up that they have a gang rivalry issue with another Outreach youth or that a neighborhood isn’t safe for workers or the youth because of gang conflict.

Tall and soft-spoken, Say jumps into the back of the SUV. Except for the fact he had to pull weeds the entire shift, Say said the new job isn’t too bad.

“I can’t complain, a job’s a job,” Say said.

Ten months ago, Say got involved with the Outreach program needing to complete more than 90 hours of community service because of his court case. Like the other youth involved in the program, Say was at risk of becoming involved in a gang.

He admits that at first he wasn’t completely on board with the program and had a lot of trust issues with Maniatis. But over time, Say got involved with many of the activities, including volunteering for the Special Olympics and the Make a Wish Foundation.

A full-time student at RPS, Say is looking for a second job to work on weekends. He said he’s happy to be back at school and is looking forward to going to college after graduation.

Maniatis answered her ringing cellphone and told 17-year-old Jeremy Lolio on the other end of the line that she was going to pick him up on his way home from Durfee High School.

When she arrived, Lolio squeezed in between Say and Pimental, and complained about how cold he was.

“Did you bring your coat to school this morning? Didn’t we talk about this?” Maniatis joked.

Lolio was out of school after he became involved in a court case, but with the help of Outreach youth workers, he is back at Durfee and happy to be there, he said.

“The program helps keep my mind on track, and I have plans now. I want to go to barber school after high school then to college for business,” said Lolio, who wants to open a barbershop eventually.

So far a job has eluded Lolio, who said he filled out a number of applications but hasn’t heard back from anyone.

“Dude, you gotta call them,” Say chided.

The choice

Pimental, Say and Lolio all agreed they had to make a conscious choice to change their lives.

The alternative is a life of violence, incarceration and often death when a youth chooses gang affiliation, Maniatis said.

There’s two ways to be initiated into a gang: “beat in,” when the prospective member is usually viciously attacked by gang-members; or “blessed,” when the new member is spared if a relative holds a high rank in the gang.

Page 4 of 4 - Getting out, Maniatis said, is hard and can even be deadly. Members who want to leave and are allowed to do it go through a “beat out,” which is a more severe assault than the initiation beating.

Fighting to keep the kids out of gangs and trouble is personal for the Outreach youth workers, Maniatis said. But for every success story, there are youth who are drawn back to the gangs, violence and incarceration.

“We just try to remind them of their goals and how far they’ve come. If they have a sibling in prison, we tell them that’s not the way they have to go. There are no guarantees. I’d like to say no kid is ever going back, but I can’t say that,” Maniatis said.